


In Memoriam

by Naphorism



Series: dckinkmeme fills [2]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Superboy (Comics), Young Justice (Comics)
Genre: Aftercare, Age Difference, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Porn, Bad Decisions, Bottom Tim Drake, Canon Compliant, Champagne, Coming Untouched, Community: dckinkmeme, Consensual, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Consensual Sex, Consensual Underage Sex, Crying, Crying Tim Drake, Dissociation, Drunk Sex, Eye Contact, First Time, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, M/M, Mentioned Kon-El | Conner Kent, Mentioned Stephanie Brown, One-Sided Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Painful Sex, Past Character Death, Past Stephanie Brown/Tim Drake, Possibly Unrequited Love, Quiet Sex, Regret, Sad, Sad Ending, Sad Tim Drake, Self-Destruction, Tim Drake Angst, Tim Drake Has Issues, Tim Drake Needs Help, Tim Drake Needs a Break, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake-centric, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, Unsafe Sex, both Lex and Tim are messes, but - Freeform, could it be?, im never brave enough to use this tag on dc fics bc canon is an ever shifting beast, seriously a lot of crying, way too much eye contact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:47:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27922495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naphorism/pseuds/Naphorism
Summary: Tim is making love to someone who isn’t even here.
Relationships: Kon-El | Conner Kent & Lex Luthor, Stephanie Brown/Tim Drake, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, Tim Drake/Lex Luthor
Series: dckinkmeme fills [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2044846
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	In Memoriam

**Author's Note:**

> My second dckinkmeme fill! For the prompt _Kon is dead, and neither Lex nor Tim are dealing with it well. Tim was secretly in love with Kon and never told him. Lex, despite their complicated (and occasionally antagonistic) relationship genuinely did care for Kon as his son. One thing leads to another, and Tim and Lex end up sleeping together. Neither of them is manipulating the other into having sex, it's just a mutually made bad decision. Maybe Lex is drunk/tipsy when it happens, and that's why he sleeps with his dead son's (possibly underaged) friend. Tim is probably just a self-destructive mess, looking for affection and comfort in the wrong places._ (https://dckinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1454.html?thread=2633646)
> 
> Tim is definitely underage here — 15 or 16. Couldn't remember exactly how old he was when Kon died, but going by the fact that he's 17ish in canon now, and he was Robin for a while before Kon died, that was the range that made sense. It's not mentioned, but be warned. Everything's consensual but he's Very Young to be sleeping with a grownass adult.
> 
> So far all of my dckinkmeme fills have been robins hooking up with villains who are way too old for them. No idea why! I have a wholesome fill about Jon and Damian in space coming soon, I swear. And some in progress stephcass. I can kick writer's block's ass if I wanna, and I will.
> 
> This is... not porn? Exactly? There's definitely sex, but it's way too vague and sad to be hot. It's unsexy sex. Ye be warned!

It’s so easy for Tim to pretend when his eyes are barely open, unshed tears blurring his vision beyond recognition, the champagne from earlier in the evening making his surroundings spin like a bad trip of a rollercoaster ride. He blinks up at the solid weight above him, sees ice blue eyes and angular black eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and it’s close enough. It’s as close as he’ll ever get, now. Closer than he ever got before.

Tim lets something that might be a sob leave his lips, then tells himself that it was nothing but a reaction to the increasing speed of the fingers inside him. He doesn’t comment on how the body above him is shaking. The space between them remains just as void of words as it has since the last time Tim spoke — outside of a lavish bistro in downtown Metropolis after stilted dinner discussions and tipsy reminiscing, gazing up at a man he has always loathed with tears on his cheeks.

_He had your eyes, you know._

Everything is too jumbled in Tim’s mind for him to remember who pulled who in first, how they managed to get into the limousine, how they made it to Luthor’s penthouse at all. Actions and events are woven together by grief and fogged by exhaustion. He does know that neither of them have closed their eyes. Are eyes not meant to be the windows to the soul? Considering how frightfully easy it is too look into them and lie to yourself, Tim knows the saying must be untrue.

Looking up at those same eyes now, Tim still thinks they’re beautiful. He always has; he doubts he’ll ever stop. Such a pale blue that they seem shot through with white — begging for comparison to a bright summer sky dotted with clouds. The first time Tim paid proper attention to them had been while drifting through real clouds, lost in the sky, and he had been certain that eyes so bright must have been a reflection of beauty around them. They’re nothing like his own shade of cold-water blue, which he’s always found lacking despite the supposed loveliness of blue eyes. Every other shade pales in comparison to the one hovering above him, scant inches from his face, closer than eyes like these have ever been.

Tim realises he has accidentally said, “Beautiful,” aloud when those sharp eyebrows go up and the weight on top of him shifts. Minutely at first, then those eyes are drawing back, revealing a face.

The face is all wrong. Tim tries to focus on the eyes, but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t. Then he can’t do anything but whine and try to pull that face back in, clinging to a bare shoulder with one hand and a stubbled jaw that isn’t the right shape with the other. He can’t slide his hand back farther: he wants there to be be the softness of close-shorn hair there, but he isn’t far enough gone on grief and Veuve Clicquot to expect it. So he clings to what he can and pulls closer, closer, until their noses are touching; until everything but those perfect eyes is a blur.

With warm breath against Tim’s lips and the taste of someone else’s dessert on his tongue, the wrong voice asks, “Are you alright?”

Suddenly the eyes blur too, and Tim blinks desperately to rid himself of the tears distorting his vision. He needs to see them. Even if the voice is wrong, and nothing else is right. He realises that he never stopped whining; that his whines have turned into whimpers; that he can’t make himself stop. He pulls again until their lips touch, pulls more until there’s no more room between them for sounds to escape. His despondency is devoured, kiss by kiss, breath by breath. Destruction is the only thing he can handle.

“Do it,” Tim murmurs, doing his best to ignore the way his tears are kissed away from his cheeks. If he thinks on it, registers the way it makes him feel, he knows he will break.

Concern flashes through those perfect irises. “I don’t have co—”

Tim leans up and closes the few centimetres between their mouths. Luthor might not stay quiet of his own volition, but Tim can make him stay quiet. He does not want to hear that voice. He does not want to hear anything. This time he closes his own eyes, fighting against every molecule in his body screaming at him to keep looking, because he needs to show something on his face. Something that might be passion, enthusiasm, anything. Tim doesn’t care — he has never felt less enthusiasm in his life, but he has never been more certain either. He has never needed anything like he does right now. Luthor seems to think he will have second thoughts, and he probably will, but not now.

Drawing back slowly and looking straight into those eyes, Tim manages a, “Please,” that sounds like it’s been torn out of his chest. “I need.” He tilts their foreheads together, breathing heavily, blunt nails digging into Luthor’s shoulder. “Please.”

A frown creases the eyebrows that Tim loves, and he leans up to kiss the wrinkle between them away even as Luthor opens his mouth to speak once more. “Is this your first—”

“No.” Tim cuts Luthor off swiftly. Though it’s not technically a lie — he and Stephanie have fucked multiple times — he is well aware that it’s not the same. He is well aware that he is about to literally take a lot more than he can handle, but can’t find it in himself to care. Not with those eyes looking down at him, understanding. Not when he already feels like he has been split in two. Not when he can barely feel his own body in the first place. He is already in pain; what’s one more hurt?

“Are—”

Tim shushes Luthor. Grabbing his face with both hands, Tim pulls him down until their foreheads are pressed together once again and pointedly wraps one leg around Luthor’s hips despite how it makes the angle of his arm even more awkward than it was before. “Do it. And be quiet,” Tim demands.

Luthor frowns harder. “Qu—”

“Shh,” hisses Tim. He drags a hand back to Luthor’s shoulder and shifts on the mattress a bit, becoming excruciatingly aware of the Egyptian cotton of the sheets sticking to his sweaty back in an uncomfortable manner. “Moment of silence. Several, very long, moments of silence.”

Sad smile visible in his eyes, Luthor whispers, “Mourning.” Then his fingers are gone, and something bigger is there. Something that takes quite a while to get anywhere with, because neither Tim nor Luthor are willing to look away from each other’s eyes. They are flying blind.

Feeling like laughing, Tim decides to stop clinging to his tenuous grip on reality. If dissociating is what his body wants to do then so be it. When they finally get there he has just enough presence of mind to think, _huh, that does hurt like hell_ , before he loses himself in sky blue and pitch black for what feels like the thousandth time so far tonight. If new tears start to prick at the corners of his eyes, how can Luthor possibly tell what their cause is?

After a little while it feels as though he is watching his own life from the outside. The idle thought that he might be making self-destructive decisions crosses Tim’s mind, an indifferent voice in the back of his skull laughing at his plight and commenting, _that’s not great_. He ignores it in favour of gripping Luthor’s shoulders as hard as he can — hard enough to bruise, he thinks, though he’s not in control of his faculties enough to be entirely sure — and focussing on the tingly feeling in his toes. It feels like he has become the champagne he and Luthor threw back with dinner, bubbly and thoughtless, and the mental image of a bottle with his face on it is so absurd that he snickers.

Luthor, true to his word, remains silent. Despite his silence, Tim knows Luthor is crying — he himself hasn’t cried in a while, now, yet his cheeks are wet with tears.

It isn’t like any sex Tim has had before, not that he considers himself an expert. He is used to a certain amount of awkward laughing, but he supposes that the awkward crying comes close enough. He is used to more enthusiasm; movement beyond perfunctory in-out, in-out. Thinking on it, he registers that he hasn’t moved at all except to tighten his grip on Luthor. He doesn't feel the need to change that. He just stays still with his forehead flush to Luthor’s, neither of them closing their eyes except to blink.

The whole thing is slow in a way that is completely unfamiliar to Tim, with none of the excitement or near desperation of his times with Steph. Luthor’s pace is practically a grind, gentle, almost lethargic, never speeding up or slowing down an inch. Tim thinks it must feel superficially good, but he’s too detached from his body to be properly aware of pleasure or pain. Staring into each other’s eyes, holding each other close — somewhat hysterically, Tim realises, _it must look like we’re making love_.

Luthor doesn’t love Tim; Tim would be humiliated on Luthor’s behalf if he did. But in the same way as people can talk about something, people can fuck about something. Luthor must know just as well as Tim does that they are fucking about Kon.

Tim is making love to someone who isn’t even here.

It wouldn’t have been like this with Kon, Tim is sure of that. It would have been fun, maybe a little ridiculous. He imagines it would have been more like his first time with Steph: comfortable and carefree, lighthearted in a way sex can only be when you’re friends with your partner. In a perfect world that exists only in Tim’s mind’s eye, they would have built up to it. Been familiar with each other’s bodies before they got to this point. Kon does — did — everything with vigour, and though he would have been careful, Tim doubts he would have been gentle. That would have been good, Tim thinks. Real proof that he needed it like Tim did.

Picturing Kon above him, grinning down at him, and staring into Kon’s eyes set into the wrong face, Tim starts sobbing. He almost surprises himself when he comes that way, still thinking of Kon, sobbing and gasping for air through hitching breaths, thinking, _well this is pathetic_. Then he’s become too incoherent for thinking at all, and he claws at Luthor’s back mindlessly as his legs twitch and fat, ugly tears stream down his temples into his hair.

When Tim’s consciousness reenters his body he is still bawling. He must have blacked out for a few moments because Luthor has finished, manoeuvred Tim into his lap, and started rubbing Tim’s back as he soaks Luthor’s shoulder with snot and tears. Luthor shushes him softly, but Tim can’t manage to stop crying. He’s crying so hard that his chest hurts; so hard the every time he heaves out another sob he feels as though he’s going to vomit. And yet Luthor keeps holding him close, rubbing his shoulders, kissing his hair.

Tim doesn’t know what he’s done deserve kindness. He just made one of the worst decisions of his life, and he doesn’t even feel any worse than he did before.

With a sobering jolt, Tim realises that he truly let Lex Luthor fuck him. He allowed Luthor to come inside of him — of course Luthor's post-orgasmic brain thinks someone who let him do that deserves kindness. That realisation only makes Tim stop in his tracks, tears abating in favour of dull horror. Everything he has done so far tonight actually happened. Tim actually has to deal with the fallout, whatever that may be. He stiffens in Luthor’s arms and reaches up to wipe at his cheeks using the back of his hand with as much composure as he can muster.

“Say something,” Tim demands, voice hardly wobbling at all. Reluctantly he looks back up at those eyes when the silence continues.

After another moment of silence Luthor furrows hauntingly familiar eyebrows at Tim, concern written across his usually inscrutable face. “You bled.”

“Probably,” Tim agrees, still looking at Luthor’s eyes.

“You did.” Luthor nudges Tim’s chin with his knuckles until Tim follows his silent direction and looks down at where he must have been sitting before Luthor hauled him into his lap, where white sheets have stained an uneven pink-red. When Tim remains silent Luthor rakes his fingers through Tim’s hair, pushing stray strands away from his eyes, then asks, “Did it hurt?”

Tim shrugs, eyes unfocussed, despite knowing now is not the time for nonverbal answers. Wearily, he mutters, “Maybe.”

“Does it still?” The concern has yet to dissipate from Luthor’s face. It makes Tim want to burst into tears, but he doesn't have any left.

“Not comparatively.” It never hurt any more than it does now. Tim knows Luthor will understand what he is comparing it to — no physical pain can feel substantial in contrast to the way he feels constantly, viscerally empty. Hollow. Every emotion is dull, as though he has been changed at the molecular level and nothing will ever feel the same again. Not happiness, not sadness, not anything. Just a void where something important used to be. A hurt that isn’t even there.

Luthor kisses Tim’s forehead. “I apologise. You should have told me; I would have stopped if you had asked.”

“I didn’t want you to stop. I didn’t care.” When Luthor looks taken aback, Tim adds, “Sorry.”

“Don’t say that,” admonishes Luthor, his second arm joining the one already wrapped around Tim’s waist. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You did a very good job.”

Tim exhales hard. It’s as close as he can manage to a snort. “Did I really,” he drawls, because he did nothing and knows it. But he is not here to judge Luthor for a marked preference for passivity in his partners.

“Yes,” Luthor insists. “You were wonderful.”

“Thank you,” Tim replies, because he can’t think of anything better to say. Pushing Luthor’s arms away, he retreats to the other side of the enormous bed. He cuts his eyes sideways to his expensive shirt and slacks, both crumpled in a heap on the floor, and admits, “I should start heading back to my hotel.”

Luthor simply offers, “I’ll call you a limo. But only once we’ve gotten you cleaned up.”

All Tim can do is nod mutely. He listens vaguely as Luthor walks away, first to the sheets shifting as he gets up, then to water running as he futzes around in his ensuite bathroom. When he returns he is wearing a ridiculously plush bathrobe and carrying a damp cloth, and Tim swats his hand away when he tries to wipe his stomach for him. He snatches the cloth from from Luthor’s hands and does it himself.

What Tim really wants to do is hiss, _I’m not a child_ , but he has a feeling it would land badly in this particular situation.

Luthor just cocks an eyebrow at Tim as if to say, _alright, have it your way_ , and wanders over to the bank of windows opposite the bed.

Tim stands up and turns his back to Luthor so that he can pretend he is alone as he wipes off the disgusting combination of lubricant and bodily fluids making his upper thighs sticky. When he’s done he drops the cloth to the floor just to be a pest before crawling back onto Luthor’s bed, careful not to land on any area that is wet with sweat or other undesirable things.

“Your father is going to kill me,” Luthor observes, monotone, as he pulls back the extravagant velvet curtains obscuring the windows to reveal the glowing nighttime lights of Metropolis.

Tim stays stock still in the centre of Luthor’s bed, his knees to his chest with his arms wrapped around them, feeling smaller than he ever has in his life. He knows Luthor is right, but he is of the firm belief that regrets are useless when you can’t change the past. The bad decisions of the night have already been made. They both have to move forward; cope with the consequences of their coping. Eventually Tim settles on pointing out, “He doesn’t kill. If he ever breaks his code, it won’t be for you.” For a moment he stares at an elaborate glass sculpture on Luthor’s nightstand in silence. “Or me.”

Luthor laughs humourlessly. “There are things worse than death, Mr. Drake.” As he gazes out of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the darkened streets of Metropolis below, he doesn’t seem to be seeing anything but blackness. “You know that better than most people. He could do things much worse than kill me.”

After what feels like hours, but is only a minute, Tim whispers, “You would have done the same for Kon.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was going for the _Reign of the Supermen_ thing where Superboy and Lex Luthor very obviously have the exact same eyes, cos that was a cool detail. And also easy to exploit for angst reasons. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are immensely appreciated. And, as always with dckinkmeme, a huge thanks to the prompter.


End file.
